Editorial: The truth comes out in Entwistle murders

The Patriot Ledger

Wednesday

Jun 25, 2008 at 12:01 AMJun 25, 2008 at 8:48 PM

Any thinking and caring person has to be outraged by the assertion of the defense attorneys in closing arguments and Entwistle’s parents after the verdict that Rachel Entwistle shot her daughter and then herself.

Veredictum.

It is Latin for “to speak the truth,” the root of the word verdict.

And the truth from 12 citizens is that Neil Entwistle callously, calculatingly and in cold blood murdered his wife Rachel and their baby, Lillian Rose.

There will be few tears shed for Entwistle, 29, who will go to prison for the remainder of his life after the 47 witnesses, piles of evidence and the remorseless recorded interview with a Massachusetts investigator after Entwistle fled to what he thought would be the protective shelter of his native England.

And while there will be much sorrow for the lives of Rachel and Lillian taken way too young, any thinking and caring person has to be outraged by the assertion of the defense attorneys in closing arguments and Entwistle’s parents after the verdict that Rachel Entwistle shot her daughter and then herself.

Their claim that Neil Entwistle found the bodies and returned the murder weapon to Rachel’s parents house 50 miles away in Carver out of love and a desire to keep Rachel from being remembered as a homicidal-suicidal mother before trying to empty their bank accounts and buying a one-way ticket to London defies belief.

Our state and federal constitutions guarantee legal representation for every defendant, regardless of their ability to pay. But there is a line between zealous representation and irresponsible attacks that is not fine and has no place in our system of jurisprudence.

Attorney Elliot Weinstein used the ploy of dragging Rachel Entwistle through the mud to try to instill doubt about Entwistle’s guilt in the jurors’ minds.

But reasonable doubt is not the same as no doubt and jurors would have to abandon any sense of reasonableness in order to accept the theory that Rachel laid the daughter she loved above all else on her chest and shot her through the heart, with the bullet entering her own heart, and then bleeding from the gaping wound turned the gun in an awkward position on herself and fired a bullet into her own head.

“We know that our son Neil is innocent, and we are devastated to learn that the evidence points to Rachel murdering our grandchild and then committing suicide,” Yvonne Entwistle said outside the Middlesex District Courthouse. “I knew Rachel was depressed. Our son will now go to jail for loving, honoring and protecting his wife’s memory.”

It is a legitimate question to ask, then, if Yvonne Entwistle knew Rachel was depressed, why did Weinstein not call her to the witness stand? Weinstein, in fact, called no one to the witness stand and one has to believe he didn’t because the theory was as thin as the paper it was scribbled on.

We rarely weigh in on criminal verdicts, believing a jury or judge are the ones in the best positions to weigh all the evidence. But when a victim such as Rachel Souza Entwistle,a Kingston native and graduate of Silver Lake Regional high School, cannot answer the most scurrilous of attacks, there cannot be enough voices raised in her defense.

We’re grateful, as are those who loved Rachel and Lillian Rose, that six men and six women in a Woburn courthouse spoke the truth for her.

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